31. Dominic
31
DOMINIC
Fuck.
I close my eyes, as if it could help. Making as if she were never here. Making as if these scars wouldn’t be there when I open my eyes.
I didn’t think. I didn’t have time to think. She isn’t supposed to be here. She’s supposed to be in my bed, sleeping, and not distracting me at all.
And yet, it’s all she’s been doing.
But now… This was the last thing I wanted her to see. Not with those cuts and burns on her beautiful, flawless skin.
Ariana is sitting here in a soft pink robe, staring at me as if I’m straight from some Halloween make-up freak show.
“How?” Her voice breaks, and my heart goes out to her. “How are they all on one side?” she manages to whisper, her eyes brimming with tears when I finally have the guts to look into them.
“He was right-handed.” With a sigh, I heave out of the water and perch on the edge just like her, sitting with that side towards her. There’s no point in trying to hide it from her now.
Her gaze drops to my scars and shoots back to my gaze. “Who?”
I smirk, but it’s sour, and the hate I keep coiled up inside me pushes to unfurl. It’s too late. Matteo did us all that favor.
“The Don.”
“The Don…like in your dad ?”
“Yep. He was—” Fucked up? A fantastic strategist. Genius. Focused. Maniacal. “A psychopath. A monster, really.”
Those quiet tears of hers are idling down her cheeks, and she blinks at me in confusion. “Parents are supposed to love their children… To protect their children…not do this.”
“Did yours? Love and protect you?” I ask quietly, knowing the answer.
Her dad is dead; her mom died in a car accident without plans for her care in case something went wrong. By slotting her in with Franco, in some weird Mafia foster home, they didn’t look out for her at all. The reason she got raped in the first place can be tied right back to some parental neglect.
“It’s not the same,” she whispers, her fingers working her robe’s fabric anxiously, almost to tearing point.
I reach for her hand to quiet her.
“In a way, it’s exactly the same.” I rub my thumb over her knuckles, signaling to her I’m okay. “It’s done. It’s in the past. It shaped me, but it doesn’t have a chokehold on me. It’s not…my master,” I say, picking my words carefully. “Not like it used to be.”
Hasn’t been for a long time and will never be again. Not since I discovered the antidote to things done to me and I’m forced to do to others.
“But why?” Her fingers grip mine. “Surely, he didn’t do this to your brothers, too?”
“No. It was part of my specific training.” And have no fear, the Don had his curriculum for each one of his sons. His plans for his army.
Her eyes widen. “Training?”
“For my role in the organization.”
“As?”
“The man who gets all questions answered.” The interrogator.
“I don’t get it.”
I shrug, not relishing the idea of explaining this to her. But we’ve come this far, and after what she told me, there’s no reason not to share with her.
“Understanding pain makes you know just how to hand it out. How to push people to a point where they would tell you anything. I know exactly how every single one of these feels like, and I can read people, know what to do to break them.” I speak quietly, but the words are harsh, and she seems to flinch at every single one of them.
We’re sitting on two sides of the pool’s corner, legs in the water, and like this, she is close to me. Maybe too close. When she pulls her hand from mine, I don’t stop her. She reaches for my side, her gaze homing in to where I’ve disguised some of the scars with tattoos, but not all the scar tissue would take ink. She spotted the cigarette burns, and now, she reaches for the lines cut by a whip, the pattern burned by a clothing iron, higher to where the Don used a scalpel on my skin, cutting the top layer in lines that eerily match hers. As if he were counting.
Her touch is like butterfly wings against my skin, and I let her explore. Feel the uncertain caress of a woman where I’ve never felt it before. Tears spill ever faster over her cheeks, her breathing becoming strained as she tries not to sob.
“How old were you?” she whispers, leaning closer as she splays her palm over my obliques and higher, her hand like a starfish wanting to cover my scars, as if she could erase all of them with touch alone.
Her warmth seeps through my skin in patches, only where the nerve endings haven’t been killed off.
“Once my mom died, there was no stopping him. I was eleven when he did these.” I take her hand and guide her forefinger to rest on the cigarette burns, counting them one by one. Cheap torture.
“How did your teachers—at school—how didn’t they?—”
“We were homeschooled.”
“But didn’t your brothers?—”
“They didn’t know, sweetheart. And when he tells you that he’ll cut your tongue in half if I told anybody…well, at that age, I was impressionable enough to believe him. He took care of my wounds, so…” Dad and son bonding time. The Don and Dominic version.
By the time Alex had caught on, a lot had happened. The Don did pace himself, but six years is a long time for abuse. And my brothers weren’t spared, so I wasn’t exactly standing in line to complain. By the time Alex cornered me, telling me I had the height and I needed to build the muscle, he’d been put through his own paces.
And not taking any of it anymore. Alex didn’t toe the line.
Alex was becoming the man who planned to cut the Don down to his knees. Kill him, even. I can see it now, looking back. Alex was the Don’s weakest link. His son who wouldn’t take his bullshit for much longer. Because of this, Alex was the strongest of all of us.
I bet the Don saw him plotting. Took stock of his influence over us. Matteo was the first in line, the heir apparent to Il Consiglio , but Alex was becoming our bedrock foundation, rising up slowly, planning to shipwreck all the Don’s plans.
To this day, I don’t know if the shootout in that warehouse, on the night when Matteo came back with Alex’s body locked in his arms, the night Peter Armstrong ratted Il Consiglio out, was a real police shootout or the Don’s way of getting rid of his son who was becoming his biggest threat.
Clean, neat, perfectly executed to the point nobody could ever point a finger to the Don, killing his own son.
I force myself not to speculate anymore, to focus instead on Ariana and the effect opening up like this would have on her. She’s been through all of this so recently, and I bet those cuts on her lower belly pulse in time with mine. Her hand still heats up my skin, her fingertips resting, with the most quiet and subtle movements tracing parts of me no woman has ever explored. Not at this pace. Usually, if a woman got this far, it came to a swift end. I don’t talk to anybody, not like I talk to Ariana now.
I close my eyes, my breathing stalling as her caress lingers over thicker scars of a whip lashing that almost cut to the bone.
“Does is still hurt?” she whispers.
“Like an echo.”
When I open my eyes, she’s right there, cheeks wet, lips plump and red with having been shredded with her teeth as she tried to keep quiet. Lips I’d love to kiss. Lips I’d love to open slowly, languidly with mine, so I can sweep my tongue over hers, and prove to her she’s still alive. That she can still feel. That we aren’t dead inside.
Lips I want to have on my skin, as much as I want to have mine on hers.
I shift so I can reach for her robe and tug at the whimsical belt keeping it closed. It opens easily, revealing the matching pajama set underneath. A thin-strapped camisole and a pair of satin shorts, riding high up to her sex. I ghost my hand over her thighs, needing to touch her where she’s touching me. Her fingertip is tracing the pattern made by the Don’s scarification, and she doesn’t stop me when I sneak my finger between the waistband and her skin and inch lower to where I can feel the tips of the first set of tally marks.
For a long moment, it’s quiet between us as we succumb to each other’s touch, to this moment of intimacy I’ve never had with someone before. When she cracks a sob, I lean in and press my forehead to hers.
“Sweetheart.” Fuck, it’s one thing to have suffered this, but knowing she’s been through it in her own way, it kills me.
“How broken are we, Dominic?” she whimpers, pressing into me with her whole body.
I pull her close, wrapping my arm around her.
“Pretty broken, sweetheart,” I whisper. “But if you let me, I can try... I can try to help you and show you how to live as if you’re whole again.”
As whole as we’ll ever be.